News of the Dead

Product Information

In 2013, James Robertson wrote a story a day: 365 tales, each one 365 words long. They were published in one volume the following year. Some stories were nothing more than light sketches, pithy squibs and fleeting impressions. However, many made a little go a long way and showcased experiments in form and a diverse array of subject matter, whether ballads, monologues, fake obituaries, replayed dreams or restyled fairy tales. In one entry, a writer describes his more inventive fables: “They’re the stories I let out in the open, the ones I slip off the leash.”

News of the Dead by James Robertson | Waterstones News of the Dead by James Robertson | Waterstones

Made by award winning filmmaker Anthony Baxter, the short documentary/drama follows Robertson as he explores the writing of his new novel News of the Dead, which is set in the fictional Glen Conach. Published by Penguin this month, the book features characters set hundreds of years apart, but all linked by the same place: an ancient hermit, a nineteenth-century charlatan and, in the present day, the Glen’s eldest resident whose young schoolboy friend thinks he’s seen a ghost. Gibb keeps his head down translating the Book of Conach and shows his face at mealtimes. After a while he becomes fond of the Baron and his family – his wife Margaret, his daughter Jessie – and deceives them to extend his stay. But when Jessie rumbles him, he finds himself under her sway and faced with an offer he is unable to refuse. These stories are gathered by an anonymous monk and written into a book which remains in the glen, first in the abbey and then, following the reformation, in the big house where it is kept in the library by the laird and his family. Of course, the monk wrote in Latin and this is the first translation because the stories would have been told in Gaelic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charles Gibb arrives at Glen Conach House to produce a copy of the Latin and to translate the book into English and to provide himself with free board and accommodation for as long as he can stretch it out. It is through Gibb that we meet the inhabitants of the Glen, the Laird and his wife, their daughter Jessamyne, the minister, the teacher, the Laird’s mother and many others. We do not meet Sandy, the laird’s son, because he is a captain in the army, involved in the Napoleonic War. He has just survived the Retreat to Corunna when this part of the story begins. Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours. Such a lovely story , past and present merging and separating , the story of the little girl who arrived as a stowaway and was taken into the heart of a village is deftly unwound. I was fascinated by the force of the narrative and ( I won’t say literally) transported to a different life.I liked that about the book: it's place, and it's description. And I like stories which, without being too prescriptive about it, interlink a few different things. I also like historical fiction. The three stories are quite different. In the early Middle Ages in Pictland, there’s the Christian hermit, Conach, whose signs and miracles performed in Glen are made legendary through ancient writings in a text known as “The Book of Conach.” Generations later in the 19th century, an antiquarian called Charles Kirkliston Gibb, is drawn to Glen Conach to transcribe and translate The Book of Conach, and in turn is taken into the grand home of the Baron of Glen Conach and his frenzied household. And then there’s the present-day reflections of Maja, an elderly woman who has lived in the Glen for most of her life and her relationship to a young boy, called Lachie, who claims to have seen a ghost. Ian Parsons has spent several years living permanently in Extremadura and now splits his time between his native county of Devon and his beloved vulture landscape, where he leads bird tours introducing people to the birds and the area he clearly loves. The only copy of this book is kept in the library of the laird of Glen Conach, until it is destroyed by fire centuries later. Excerpts from the translated version of the book are included within the novel. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience – the local community.

News of the Dead by James Robertson - Episode guide - BBC

Set in the fictional setting of “Glen Conach” in the North East of Scotland, Robertson in his classic style combines three narratives from characters across different centuries, tied together by their connection to the Glen, creating a tale which is steeped in myth, folklore and legend. Conach told Talorg that ten years was a long time to a youth, but little more than a short sleep to an older man, and less than the blink on an eye to God’ One day you will wake up and it will be the last day of your life. You may know this or you may not.’ The News of the Dead is a cleverly almost classicesque written piece which is thought provoking and moving. Delving into the people of our past and the stories that are passed down through generations. These stories are the way in which people are remembered for years after they leave this earth. But how much of these stories are true? And as they are passed down throughout the generations and rewritten, how much is added to it by the new narrator of its time.The best science fiction fires our imagination at the same time as making us look inward. Here are the must-read sci-fi classics novels.